The Brightest Day

by Christopher Nicole

  “No, no. She is always accompanied by a man.”

  “The same man?”

  “No, no. Sometimes it is a young man, sometimes someone older. Sometimes there is a young girl.”

  “Do you know these people?”

  “No. Not the young ones. De Gruchy called the boy Philipe.”

  “And the girl?”

  “Gabrielle. I think they are brother and sister.”

  “And the older one?”

  “He she calls Jean. He walks with a limp and has a hoarse voice. I believe he is the man Moulin.”

  “And you can identify these people? Mademoiselle de Gruchy and these two men? And the girl? Do you know their surnames?”

  “No. I have tried asking Monsieur Vlabon, and he tells me to mind my own business. But if your people are in the bar when next they come in, I will point them out to you. But afterwards, you must give me protection.”

  “We intend to take care of you. There is just one more question I have to ask. These people, do you know where they live, where they come from to visit Aumont?”

  “I believe it is on a farm in the Massif. But I do not know, exactly.”

  “I see. Now, Madame Dugard, I have to tell you that it is Colonel Roess’ intention to execute you, the moment he is satisfied that you have told him everything he wishes to know.” Juliette stared at her in consternation. “And I may say,” Joanna went on, “as I know Colonel Roess very well, that he is not likely to be satisfied by anything you have told me, and thus your execution is not likely to be quick or painless. He actually enjoys torturing people, and he enjoys torturing women more than anything else.”

  “But… I am trying to help you catch this woman.”

  “So you say. But to Colonel Roess you are merely a nuisance who can be used for his pleasure.”

  “What am I to do?”

  “I would say that your only hope is to get out of here and disappear. I am sure you can do that.” She smiled. “You could join the Resistance yourself.”

  “But…” Juliette licked her lips. “This is Gestapo Headquarters. How can I get out of here?”

  Joanna had already made a visual reconnaissance of the situation. “Through this window behind me. It leads on to a flat roof, from which you will be able to reach the street. Once there it is up to you. But it is at least a chance. It is better than being flogged to death.” Juliette looked at her, and then at the door, and then at the window. “Here.” Joanna opened her bag and took out the Luger. “You will have had to overpower me. Do you know how to use this?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, take it, and use it if you have to. I will pretend to have been so shocked by your getting hold of the gun and escaping that I will be unable to raise the alarm for ten minutes.”

  Another lick of the lips but Juliette took the pistol. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Let’s say that I also have secrets to protect.”

  Juliette looked at the door a last time, then went to the window and opened it. As she did so, Joanna screamed, “Help! Help me!” at the top of her voice.

  Juliette, having hitched up her skirt and got one leg over the sill, turned back to her, her face a mixture of outrage and anger. Lips drawing back from her teeth, she levelled the pistol and squeezed the trigger, and again as it clicked on the empty chamber. As she fired a third time, ineffectively, Joanna closed with her, having taken the knife from her bag. This she now drove into Juliette’s breast, and again.

  *

  “Would you like to tell me what happened?” Roess inquired.

  “Give me another glass of brandy.” Joanna was still panting as she sat in Kaufman’s chair. The front of her dress was drenched in blood, and there was no doubting the genuineness of her agitation; but then, she had never killed someone with a knife before. Roess snapped his fingers, and one of the anxious secretaries pushed the broken door aside and hurried from the room to fetch the bottle. Kaufman also hovered, along with several of his men. Juliette’s body had been taken from the window and laid on the floor; she still held the pistol. The brandy was brought, and Joanna drank deeply.

  “The bitch jumped me. Took me completely by surprise. I hadn’t even done anything to her yet. I was talking to her, telling what would happen if she did not fully co-operate, when she suddenly attacked me, knocked me down, took my pistol and ran to the window.”

  “So you got up and went after her with your knife. But she had the gun. Why did she not shoot you?”

  “Of course she shot at me. What she did not know was that I always keep my gun with an empty chamber, to avoid accidents.”

  “And she did not know who she was dealing with,” Kaufman said admiringly.

  Roess shot him an impatient glance. “So you obtained no information and damn near got yourself killed. You are both over-confident and incompetent.”

  “Of course I obtained information,” Joanna snapped. “She gave me a detailed description of this so-called Liane de Gruchy, and proved her entire story to be a pack of lies. She described the woman as being at least her own height. Well, she is a tall woman. I know, and so do you, Herr Colonel, that Liane is below average height.”

  Roess regarded her for several seconds. Then he said, “What else did she say of her?”

  “Oh, she said that she was good-looking and had blonde hair. But these things are well known. It was obvious to me that she had never actually met Liane.”

  “And the man?”

  “An elderly man with a limp. Here again she betrayed herself. Jean Moulin is not an elderly man.”

  “He may well appear so, after his experiences. Have you ever met him?”

  “Once. Briefly. At Amalie’s marriage to the Jew Burstein.”

  “But you would recognize him.”

  “Well, I don’t know. As you say, he may well have changed after being tortured by your thugs.”

  Roess gave a thin smile. “But you are now a thug yourself, Fraulein. A veritable Kali. The evidence is before you. I think we will proceed with our plan, go to Aumont, and see what we can unearth.”

  Joanna spilled some of her brandy, and hastily drank the rest. “What for, when we know it will be a waste of time?”

  “I do not agree with you. I believe something is going on there that may be well worth investigating. Now the car will take you back to the hotel so that you can change those stinking clothes. Kaufman, get rid of this carrion and have the place cleaned up. Then I will tell you what dispositions I require. Off you go, Fraulein. I will make a full report of this incident to the Reichsfuehrer.”

  Joanna got up. I have committed murder, she thought, to no avail. She left the room.

  *

  “My darling!” Liane held James close. “God speed.”

  “And to you. If you knew how much I wish I could be coming with you…”

  “I do know. Take care of him, Mr Brune.”

  Brune, standing in the gloom beside his aircraft, took the opportunity to kiss her. “I will do that, mademoiselle.”

  James hugged Amalie and shook hands with Moulin. “Hopefully, next time I see you I’ll have an army at my back.”

  A few minutes later, the Lysander was soaring into the night sky. Liane stared after it until it disappeared. “Now,” she said. “Put out those flares, and then let us join the others. We have a long way to go tonight.”

  “Do you shed not a tear for your lover?” Philipe asked.

  Liane frowned at him but he would know James had slept in her bed during his two nights at the farm. “Did not a poet write that there is a time for everything, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to love and a time to hate. And a time to kill. That is what we are now going to do. Jean?”

  “How I also wish I could come with you. But I too will wish you God speed.”

  “And you will stay at the farm until we return?”

  “Well, in a couple of days time I will go into Aumont as usual, and have a drink with Jean
-Pierre. It would not be a good idea to let anyone think that we are up to something.”

  “I will come with you,” Gabrielle said. She also was disappointed that she was not being allowed to accompany the guerillas.

  “Well, take care.” Liane hugged them both and led her people into the night.

  *

  The rest of the group were waiting for her at the rendezvous. This was the first time Liane had had the opportunity to size up her little band, for she had not worked with them before. She was actually in a unique position herself. Always before when engaging in any large-scale action, she had been accompanied by an utterly trustworthy male aide, usually her brother Pierre, except for the two occasions she had been commanded by James himself. But Pierre was dead, cut down by Johann Roess’ henchmen in the ruins of Dieppe, and James was in England.

  To the men who followed her now, willingly enough because she was a legend, she was an unknown quantity in the flesh. Only Amalie and Philipe knew her personally; only Amalie had fought beside her before. She could not doubt Amalie’s courage, her determination to fight, to kill Germans and, even if she had not yet seen her at work, she was prepared to believe that she had become an explosives expert, but even had James not warned her, she better than anyone knew of her sister’s mental instability. It had been there even as a child, but lost in the general ambience of a wealthy, happy home. When she had met and fallen in love with Henri Burstein, she had done so with all the concentrated energy that was part of her personality.

  Their parents had not approved. Although they would have denied any suggestion of anti-Semitism, however much they had to be aware that there was an undercurrent of it throughout French society, Albert de Gruchy was descended from a long line of wine growers, who over two centuries had steadily grown in wealth and prestige and social standing. While Barbara de Gruchy came, however remotely, from a family that had been at the top of the English social tree even before two members of it had made the tragic mistake of marrying King Henry VIII. Neither Barbara nor Albert felt that Henri, whose father owned a dry goods store in Dieppe, would fit into their social scene and family background, even if Henri had attended St Cyr with Amalie’s elder brother Pierre, and they had been officers in the same regiment of the Motorized Cavalry. Very probably they had been right. Yet they had given way and thrown all their considerable wealth and social clout behind the wedding.

  Liane knew that she had been at least partly responsible for this. Not by any arm-twisting on behalf of her little sister, and not even by expressing any great admiration for Henri – although she certainly had no prejudices – but simply because she had failed her parents. Not only was she their eldest child, but she was the most beautiful, the most talented, the most forceful of them all. Her future had been unlimited, and carefully plotted, beginning with the Swiss finishing school, and intended to culminate in a great party in Paris, at which, she would be displayed to the fashionable world and hopefully be snapped up by some handsome and rich aristocrat and live happily ever after.

  That plan had never been going to work. Liane had not liked having her life chosen for her, and she had never liked the idea of subjecting herself to one man and spending her youth in a world of nappies and aimless cocktail parties. But her mind had not been made up until she had met Joanna. At that time, the concepts of sexual and bisexual behaviour, heterosexual and homosexual inclinations, had not crossed her mind. As with any collection of high-spirited teenage girls confined together, there had been much exploratory horseplay but none of it had been the least meaningful, emotionally, until the night Joanna had crawled into her bed. That had made her want more, and to the physical excitement had soon been added an emotional attachment that had lasted.

  Inevitably they had been discovered and expelled. Mama and Papa had been informed and been shocked. She had been returned to the family home in Paulliac on the Gironde; Joanna had been sent back to Connecticut and her mother. Yet neither set of parents had been able to alter the course of events. Joanna’s parents had been handicapped by being divorced. Her father was a Swedish diplomat, and thus she had alternate homes on both sides of the Atlantic. As she was obviously going to do her own thing, no matter what, her mother had secured her a job as a roving gossip columnist for an American newspaper, which had launched her into the European, and especially the German, social scene during the last years of the thirties, and thus had led almost directly to the bizarre situation she was now in, where her instincts had had to be submerged in Nazi masculine ideology, her very real hatred for the regime that had carelessly killed her brother so disguised as to have her called a traitor by everyone who did not know the truth – and that was only half a dozen people in the whole world. She had lived now for three years on a knife-edge. But knowing Joanna, although Liane had only managed to see her on a couple of occasions since 10 May 1940, she was enjoying it to the hilt.

  But when the War was over? Did she love Joanna? She thought not, in the way Joanna loved her. Because their lives, after that first separation, had taken such different courses. Her parents had certainly been united in their desire to change her ways, but they too had been unable to stand up to her personality. So they had surrendered, bought her a Paris flat – was it still there? – given her a generous allowance and told her to get on with her life. She had done that, losing herself in the demi-monde of would-be artists and writers and painters that thronged the Left Bank, having sex as and when she chose, with whomever she chose, male and female. She had known she was wasting her youth, her beauty and her talents but, like a drug addict, had been unable to stop.

  She had been waiting for something to happen, some man to sweep her off her feet, or some event… The odd thing was that on the day before 10 May 1940, she had actually met such a man and seduced him with all the confident skill she had developed over the previous ten years. That James Barron had been invited to the wedding by her sister Madeleine had added spice to the occasion; Madeleine had never approved of her lifestyle. And within hours, the entire world had fallen apart, and she had found what it seemed she had spent her entire life anticipating.

  It had not happened immediately. First had come the traumatic events of the first few days, when she had, with her usual careless abandon at that time, volunteered to drive Pierre and Henri, and James, up to the Belgium border so that they could rejoin their units; the wedding had taken place in Chartres, just south of Paris. It had been a jolly, with Joanna at her side. And it had turned out to be a catastrophe, as on their return journey they had become caught up in the masses of refugees, had had their car destroyed, along with Joanna’s half-brother, in a strafing attack, and finally when, exhausted and distraught, they had sought shelter in a deserted house, they had been found by those German deserters. Perhaps because of the life she had lived during the preceding few years she had reacted more calmly than Joanna, who had been hysterical. Yet when she had regained the safety and privacy of her Paris flat she had wanted only to shut herself away from the world. At that moment, she had not even cared that France had surrendered, that for the foreseeable future she and her countrymen and women were going to have to exist as a conquered people.

  Biedermann had changed that. The Gestapo officer had been one of those who had interviewed her after the rape, trying to get her to suppress her story. She had actually agreed, in her anxiety to bury the experience. But he had marked her beauty and, as he had supposed, her vulnerability and so had come calling, once the Germans were in full control of Paris, seeking to assert the rights of the conqueror. She did not suppose anything had suddenly snapped. She had, in fact, over the preceding couple of weeks, been slowly aware of a mood creeping over her. She could not spend that foreseeable future locked in that flat, going out only to buy food. She had to do something, and not just to avenge what had happened to her, or for France, but to atone for the years she had wasted in meaningless hedonism. But she had had no idea what she could do, until Biedermann forced himself on her. She had submitted, because
he was bigger and stronger than she. But when he was contentedly asleep, she had obtained a kitchen knife and cut his throat.

  That simple act, which would have been unthinkable before the War, or even perhaps the previous day, had propelled her through life as if she had been fired from a cannon. Her first task had been to escape immediate arrest. This she had done by taking Biedermann’s papers as well as his pistol and fleeing Paris. She had calculated, correctly, that Biedermann, who had been on his way home from his office, would have told none of his colleagues that he intended to visit a Frenchwoman with rape in mind, and it had been three days before his corpse had been found. By then, she had been in Vichy. More importantly, she knew where she was going. For Biedermann had carelessly told her that Jean Moulin had escaped the Gestapo, by whom he had been arrested and tortured for failing publicly to condemn the original rape claim and acknowledge that the deserters had been French, and was reputed to be sheltering amidst the virtually impenetrable peaks and valleys and woods of the Massif Central. There she had found him, and the small band of desperate patriots who were determined to resist the Boche to the end.

  She remembered with some amusement that, Jean apart, the guerillas had not actually welcomed a woman, however beautiful and however famous, in their midst. But she had soon proved more dangerously determined that any of them. And there had been a bonus she could never have expected. As they had regrouped following the disaster of Dunkirk, the British had sought help wherever they could find it, and an obvious source to tap had been those French men and women who had refused to accept defeat. The British SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, had despatched agents to seek out possible guerilla units that they could arm and control. One of those agents had been her own brother Pierre, and his controller had been that same James Barron, with whom she had shared that unforgettable night on the eve of the invasion.

  This had not been a coincidence. James and Pierre had escaped Dunkirk together, and it had seemed natural to his superiors that James, as a friend of the de Gruchys, should be Pierre’s controller. James had had no idea, then, that this would involve controlling Liane as well. Out of that had come this strange, intensely intimate and yet curiously abstract relationship. They loved, desperately whenever they had been able to get together, which was about twice a year. When they were separated, they went about their business, separately and yet, as he gave the orders, always working together no matter how far they might be apart. She knew he suffered more than she did. His adoration of her was evident but, as on this occasion, he had to sit in London and wait and listen, while she risked her life; the three occasions on which, they had been able to fight shoulder to shoulder had been bonuses.